The Mystics of Mile End

This riveting debut novel, in the vein of Nicole Krauss' The History of Love, follows the Meyer family's obsession with the Kabbalah's Tree of Life.

The Canadian neighborhood of Mile End is a unique one. There's the Meyer family-widowed David Meyer may be a professor of Jewish Mysticism, but that doesn't make him a believer in religion; his daughter Samara secretly lights Shabbat candles and is studying for her Bat Mitzvah; his eleven-year-old son Lev is just trying to understand the world around him. Next door neighbor and Holocaust survivor Mr. Glassman surreptitiously tutors Samara for her Bat Mitzvah. And across the street lives Mr. Katz, an older man no one in Mile End will touch, not even the rest of the Hasidic community. Katz, to Lev's delight, is building the Tree of Knowledge out of scraps of trash on his front yard.

When David is diagnosed with a heart murmur, he begins to believe God is speaking to him deep within his chest. While having an affair with one of his students, he delves into the complexities of Kabbalah. Months later Samara, too, grows obsessed with the Kabbalah's Tree of Life-hiding her interest from Lev, neighborhood friend Alex, and girlfriend Jenny, none of whom can understand her fascination with these Kabbalistic questions. But as she becomes more and more overcome with reaching the Tree's highest heights, someone must help her down. The entire neighborhood of Mile End has been there all along, but only one of them can catch her when she falls.